1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to automating the setup of a user's financial management application account for electronic transfer of data between an account at a financial institution and the user's financial management application account.
2. Description of Background Art
Financial management applications, such as Intuit Inc.'s Quicken® product and other similar products, provide users with comprehensive tools for organizing, tracking and manipulating the user's financial information. Typically, financial applications require entry by the user of significant amounts of information for financial transactions, such as date, amount of transaction, account number, payee and the like. In order to make these applications less burdensome and easier to use, certain financial management applications include the ability to create an account in the financial management application and to transfer data electronically between such account and an account of the user at a financial institution, for example, by downloading transactional data from the financial institution account into the application account.
Conventionally, before a user of a financial management software application can transfer data electronically between his or her account at a financial institution and the financial management application account, a number of “setup” steps had to be performed manually, such as:                (a) creating or retrieving an account in the financial management application to receive the data to be transferred from an account at the financial institution;        (b) identifying the financial institution with which the user desires to perform the electronic data transfers, along with the URL or other network addressing information in order to establish a network communication with such financial institution;        (c) navigating the financial management application menus to find the appropriate place(s) to enter the URL or other network addressing information;        (d) obtaining from the financial institution an identification number associated with the account at the financial institution from which and/or to which data will be transferred, such as the customer ID, PIN, ABA routing number, account number and the like;        (e) navigating the financial management application menus to find the appropriate place(s) to enter such identification number;        (f) entering such identification number at such appropriate place(s) so that the financial management application can establish communication with the account at the financial institution; and        (g) where the financial institution has more than one account for the user corresponding to the account identification number, selecting one or more of the accounts presented for download of data.        
After performing such “setup” steps, the accounts are ready for activation of the electronic data transfer. However, performing such setup steps before being able to transfer data electronically between the account in the financial management application and the account at the financial institution is time consuming, difficult and cumbersome. Users often did not understand the need to create or retrieve an account on the financial management application side in order to receive data transferred from the account at the financial institution. Even if a user managed to create an account on the financial management application side to receive the electronically transferred data from the account on the financial institution side, it was difficult for the user to initiate transfer of data. Further, after a user enrolled for online access at the financial institution through such financial institution's website, there was often no smooth transition back to the financial management application to complete the setup process. As a result, many users of financial management applications did not take advantage of the electronic transfer capabilities of such applications.